Oct 5, 2011

Best Friends With Characters.

I was flipping through a magazine the other day and I came across an intriguing question, "If you could be friends with any character in a book who would you be friends with?" I have found myself thinking about that question for a few days. So this morning I went and stood in front of my bookshelf and decided I just had to have an answer to this question. Which characters out of the books on my shelf would I want to be friends with? I never do anything halfway and I must sheepishly admit that I am sitting here surrounded by 18 books that have characters in them I would adore being friends with. And I am confident that I could have found 18 more if I had not consciously stopped myself :)

So the first one I have to be friends with is Emma from Jane Austen's novel Emma. Emma most definitely had some flaws but she always had good intentions and when she responds to a situation at a picnic in a very poor manner and her dear friend Mr Knightley reproves Emma and explains to her how wrong she was to respond the way she did she bears his reproving with such strength and then determines to fix the situation and is willing to admit that she had been wrong. I would love nothing better that to be friends with someone who tried so hard to be genuine and help people and could admit when she had done wrong. I confess that I dearly would have loved to wear those long dressses with the empire waists and take walks and shoot bow and arrows with her. She is a character that really grows throughout her story and it is fun to be around people who learn and grow in a pleasant easygoing way :) Jane Austen gives her some unlikeable qualities because Emma lives more fully than the others in her world, takes more chances, and feels her successes and failures more keenly. And I love that.

My next dear friend would have to be Eowyn from Lord of The Rings. Eowyn is fearless and I could use a friend with "long hair like a river of gold" and some fearless in my life :) Eowyn did not sit around waiting for an outcome she acted. SIGH.....I would love to hang out with someone who acted and did not wait to be acted upon. If I was her friend I would have been there for her when she realized Aragon did not love her and I would have been ecstatic for her when she met Faramir and married him. We could have ridden our horses across the most incredibly picturesque fields with our hair flowing in the wind and I would hope we would go sword shopping together :)

I thought about being friends with the main characters from two of my favorite books....The Angle of Repose and A Room With A View but Lucy Honeychurch would have been so frustrating to be friends with because it took her forever to be honest with herself about her feelings for George. I wonder if I could have waited patiently for her to discover them? And then Susan Ward sigh...how she messed up everything. I mean it takes two to tango but to watch her come to her angle of repose is oh so painful. But this is not about people I do not want to be friends with ...that can be tomorrow :)

How about Anne Shirley of Green Gables? Oh what a fabulous friend that would have been for me. She was stubborn, she was passionate, she was loyal and oh so smart. I think we could have taken on the world together. Our hearts could have soared together when we saw a beautiful view. I would definitely laid in the bottom of a boat and quoted poetry while floating down the river with her. We could have talked about words for hours on end. And as a added bonus Anne adored fantasy....I could use a break from my, "all about reality friends"....sorry guys :)

Another one that made the top of my list of 18 was Katherine Mary O'Fallon who is the main character in the book Mrs. Mike. She left her home in Boston to marry a Canadian mountie and headed into the great Canadian wilderness with him. I promise I do not just want to be her friend so I can see the Northern lights....that would just be an added bonus. I would selfishly hope I could learn about love from her. Her story is so tender and romantic. Would I have been a supportive friend as she adjusted to living so differently than she had been used to in Boston? Would I have been able to comfort her adequately when her children died? We could have chatted about maturing marriages and their troubles. And how I would have loved to listen to her talk about all she learned.

So I never intended to bore you with my entire list of 18 but I will tell you that silly me had Seabiscuit in my pile...who would not want to be friends with a racehorse? I had The Great Brain...yes girls can be friends with boys. I had Little Women, The Host, Pride and Prejudice, Anne Frank, Redwall (yes,I would be the first human that would be friends with mice :), My Antonia, The Great Gatsby....Nick of course would be the best friend ever he was so open minded and so good at listening. So here is to our favorite friends in books, they fill our minds with so many dreams and hopes and help us to recognize oh so many things as we watch them struggle. I wonder if I was a character in a book if you would want to be my friend? :)

About Me

There is a really good chance that you are here staring at my little old blog because you googled "Why do I over think?" I wish I had all the answers for you about over thinking but I don't. I do know that we over thinkers get a really bad rap. All the under thinkers claim that we have issues and of course that is so not true:)If only they would over think it they would understand :) You see we only over think things we do not understand. Yes, I know there are some things we may never understand but trust me you will know when it is time to stop thinking about those things you will never understand :) So if I were you I would not fret about overthinking and definitely not try to fix it just embrace who you are and have a good laugh about your need to understand everything you possibly can :) And who am I to give you advice on over thinking? Um...well no one really :) Just a mom of seven in her 40's who loves to write about the things she over thinks :)